Although childhood cancer is rare, it is still the leading cause of death by disease in children age 14 and younger. Sadly, the genetic causes of some of the most devastating childhood cancers remain a mystery....More

Genetic factors and errors in cell development play a prominent role in childhood cancers. During development of the immune system, lymphocyte cells must create intentional breaks in DNA in order to create a diverse immune system....More

Robert Baloh, MD, PhD, returned to his medical roots in 2005, when he accepted a Fellowship in neuromuscular diseases at Washington University School of Medicine. Four years earlier, he had completed Washington University’s Medical Scientist Training Program before heading to Harvard for a medical internship and a residency in neurology...More

Malaria is the fourth most common cause of all deaths of children under the age of five. Because of the rapid spread of drug resistance to current treatments, new anti-malarial agents are badly needed. Two Discovery Institute investigators have combined their expertise to help find them....More

Thanks to progress in treatments and surgical techniques, about 30,000 children born with heart defects now reach adulthood every year in the United States. As a result, the number of adults who live with congenital heart disease has exceeded one million. And, of these, nearly 100,000 are living with severe heart defects. ...More

Most of us take for granted that our bowels work normally. But their function depends on the proper development of an estimated 500 million nerve cells in the bowel called the enteric nervous system. When this part of the nervous system does not form normally, movement or sensation in the bowel may be abnormal. This may result in disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome, which affects up to 15 percent of the U.S. population. An even more severe pediatric disease of the enteric nervous system is called Hirschsprung disease, a potentially fatal disorder where the enteric nervous system is completely missing from the end of the bowel....More

Kevin was born with a heart abnormality called Tetralogy of Fallot, which at one time would have been fatal in infancy. Thanks to several miraculous surgeries over several years, his heart was working well, and he celebrated his 17th birthday. His expectations, and those of his parents, were that he would live a long and healthy life, possibly even become a doctor to help kids in the same way he had been helped. He had even started to visit universities on weekends. While throwing a Frisbee with friends on a normal Thursday afternoon, Kevin’s heart began misfiring, a condition called arrhythmia. He suddenly collapsed and died before medical attention could arrive....More

President Obama has appointed Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and vice president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)....More

The search for the cause of an inherited form of a rare, aggressive childhood lung cancer has uncovered important information about how the cancer develops and potentially sheds light on the development of other cancers....More

According to the Human Genome Project website, there are approximately 20,000 protein-coding genes within the three billion or so chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. Identifying the genes, however, was just a first step in understanding humans at the molecular level. For most of those 20,000 genes, their function is still an open question....More